Spartan Games Linking and Splitting Fire

When to link or split fire for a squadron is one of the most important decisions in any Spartan Game product. In this post I'll talk about each one.

Here we have a squadron of four Prussian frigates who want to target one Britannia Cruiser. For the example's sake we are at range band one (zero to eight inches away).

  At this range band each frigate gets six dice each.

The cruiser's Damage Resistance (DR) is four and Critical Rating (CR) is six.

If each frigate rolled the average on six dice, on average there would be one of each number rolled.

This would generate an average of four hits for each frigate on the cruiser. 

This means that the cruiser would take a minimum of four hull damage (one for each of the four hits equaling or exceeding its DR). This would destroy the cruiser (as it only has four hull points or HP).

If two of the frigates combined fire, the first one would get the full six dice and the other frigate would add half (rounded down) for a total of nine dice.

This would, on average, provide five to seven hits. This would do either a HP of damage or a critical. With four frigates doing this (linked twice) it would score two HP to two critical. As you can see, this is not as dependable on average compared to each frigate firing on its own. It may even provide less damage on a cruiser than if each one fired individually. This is because a critical hit, one that equals or exceeds the CR rating of a ship, will on average score two hull hits.

 Now have all four combine fire. The first one gets six dice and the other add three each for a total of fifteen dice!

That would score seven to thirteen hits. Definitely a critical on the cruiser and maybe two. Why two? Because thirteen is more than double the critical rating (CR) of the cruiser. If it was eighteen then it would be three critical. Devastating but again it would be taking a chance. Why? Because on average it would score only one critical and on average criticals score two HP. The cruiser would still be alive and returning fire.

Against a battleship, all of the frigates linking fire would be the best choice to make a dent in it because you need the fifteen dice.

To do well at Spartan Games products, think of the averages and maximize your HP damage to take out models completely.

RANGE BAND TWO

For the same four frigates firing at a cruiser at range band two, each frigate would get three dice. This will provide less of a chance to destroy the cruiser as the damage would be one to two hits. Not enough to dent its DR of four.

With linking fire, the first ship uses their full three dice and each ship adds half (rounded down). This adds up to six dice for all frigates. This will be four hits on average and cause a HP of damage. As you can see, take the average number of hits to calculate whether to link or for the ships to go on their own.

 

THREE CRUISERS

If you have three cruisers at range band one to shoot at, do you link or go separatly? The answer is both. You link fire with two of the frigates against each cruiser. This gives you nine dice to roll against each cruiser. On average you will do five to six points of damage scoring a hit or a critical.

Say you have a Britannia Cruiser against four frigates at range band one. You only have two turrets. What do you do?

I would split fire with one turret and use the other to fire on one ship. Reason being that a frigate's DR is three and CR is five. A critical automatically destroys a small ship. You would be scoring two to three hits on average with the split fire (you divide the dice you have, any way you want as long as the total does not exceed the weapon total) and seven hits with the full turret. This would score a hull damage on two ships with a critical destruction of a third. This would cripple the frigate squadron and force the opponent to retreat to the back of the playing field to keep thier fog of war STAR card for that squadron. Again you have to know your target number of hits and compute the average number of hits for each option.

I hope this article helped.